Instagram is a dominant marketing tool for your business. Here’s how to get the most out of it.
- This is a popular social media platform that can serve as a valuable marketing tool for your business.
- Users can create a business account on Instagram by first creating a personal account and converting it.
- We should use high-quality photos, and also the hashtags wisely.
Is one of the most popular social media platforms, from gathering information to selling products, This continues to roll out tools to help business owners to achieve success in social media photo sharing platform marketing.
With the correct marketing strategy, businesses can promote products and services, build their brand, and increase sales on Instagram. Here’s everything you need to know about using it to market your business.
Tip: When it comes to setting up Instagram for your business, you can create a new business account from scratch or convert your personal account to a business account.
Creating a Account
How to create an business profile from scratch:
- Download the Instagram app for iOS, Android, or Windows to your smartphone or tablet.
- Click Sign up.
- Enter your e-mail address. It’s a good idea to use your company email or an email specifically designed for your company’s social media accounts.
- Choose a username and password.
- Now we have to convert the personal Instagram account to a business profile.
Here are the Steps;
- Go to your profile and press the three bars in the upper right-hand corner.
- Click Settings and select Switch to work profile. Instagram also recommends that you connect your business profile on Instagram to your Facebook business page. Add details about your business, including your name, username, profile picture, website URL, and a short bio.
Instagram terminology
It is a good idea to be up to date on some of the social media platform’s terminology.
- Bio: This is the bio section of your profile. Companies can also use your bio to include a call to action.
- Direct Messages (DM): We may communicate with each other privately through Direct Messages. If a customer has a complaint or question, it’s best to chat with them via direct message to keep the conversation private.
- Filters – You can apply cool filters to your photos to enhance functionality and color.
- Follow: When you follow a user on Instagram, you’ll see their content on your timeline. You can also see your Instagram stories at the top of the app.
- Followers: Your followers are people who will see your photos in their news feed.
- Hashtag (#): A hashtag on Instagram is used to index words or phrases. When you click on a hashtag, you’ll see other posts with that hashtag.
- Highlights: A highlights reel from your Instagram Stories appears on your profile above your photo gallery and remains until you delete it.
- Home – Press the home button to access your home screen, which is also your timeline or feed. Here you will see photos of the people you follow.
- IG: is a symbol for Instagram
- Instagram ID: Your Instagram ID is your username. To mention a user on Instagram, you must use their username, which always starts with the @ symbol.
- Instagram Stories: Stories is one of the platform’s most popular features. These will disappear after 24 hours.
- Tagging: There are several ways to tag people on Instagram, including in a caption, Instagram stories, and photos. Use the @ symbol to tag someone in an Instagram caption or story. You can tag someone in your photos before posting the image.
Now that you know how to create your profile and understand common Instagram terminology, here’s how to use Instagram to grow your business.
1.Add professional quality photos.
In this platform, Generic photos will not suffice. Take photos, edit them, and take the time to make sure you’re creating a consistent grid on Instagram. [Read Related Article: Top 12 Photo Editing Apps for Business]
To add a new photo, tap the camera button at the bottom of the screen. Similarly, you can take a new photo or select one from your camera roll. While on the next screen, there are several options to customize your message. Also, you can add a filter, tag other users, write a title and add a location.
2. Use Instagram Stories.
This also offers many tools that make it easy to create engaging and creative stories.
On Stories, you can post recorded videos, still photos, live videos, boomerangs (looping videos), basic text, music, and targeted photos. Moreover can add stickers such as your location, temperature, user tags, and hashtags.
Stickers for polls, questions, and sliders make it easy to interact with users and get feedback. Some accounts use the question feature to host a weekly Ask Me Anything request, which is a fun way to answer common questions.
you also can draw attention to your brand with Stories Highlights, which stay on your profile until you remove them.
3. Stream live videos.
You can give customers a live behind-the-scenes look at interesting aspects of your business, showcase products, or answer questions live through commentary.
Once the video is finished, it stays on your Instagram stories for 24 hours. Anyhow you also can save the videos in highlights as well. If you choose to record or upload a video, you can still add filters and change the cover.
4. Interconnect with other Instagram users.
In social media platform, it’s important to engage and interact with your followers on Instagram.
- Likes: Likes is an easy way to connect with other users. To like a photo, double-tap the image or tap the heart button below the post.
- Comment – Is next to the “Like” button is a comment button – just tap it and the app will take you to the comment page for that photo, with a text box where you can type in what you mean. Tap Publish when you’re done.
- Mention: Just like on Twitter, you can use the @ symbol to tag other users in your Instagram comments or in the captions of posts.
- Tagging: Instagram allows you to add tags before posting content. To do this, tap Tag people before sharing your photo, then tap the spot in the photo where you want to add a tag. The app then prompts you to type the person’s name to find their account.
- DM: With this you can send private instant messages, photos and videos to other users. To send a new DM, tap the + button in the upper right corner and select Send a photo or video, or Send a message. After you send the message, you and the recipients can exchange messages. Users who don’t already follow you will be asked if they want to allow you to send them photos and videos before they can see your DM.
Earlier this year, Facebook, owner of Instagram, plans to integrate Instagram messaging with Facebook Messenger.
5. Use hashtags.
Hashtags can include letters and numbers, but cannot contain non-numeric characters.
Since users can search for hashtags and click on hashtags they see in app posts, relevant hashtags can be a very effective tool for gaining attention. However, be sure to use the right hashtags for your brand.
Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags in a post or comment, but that would be excessive. Using lots of popular hashtags can get you a lot of likes from other users, but it probably won’t increase your following as much, and the interactions you get will probably not come from people interested in your brand, but rather from those you just met have seen and liked your photo.
Once you understand hashtags, you can branch out and experiment to find the ones that work best for your brand. It’s also a good idea to create a custom hashtag for your business or even an event you’re hosting. This way, customers can follow an event, even if they’re not there in person.
6. Advertise on Instagram.
As with other social networks, businesses have the option of advertising on Instagram. There are three ad formats:
- Photo Ads: Looks like regular photo posts, but have a sponsored tag above the photo. They also have a More Info button in the lower right corner below the photo.
- Video Ads: Like photo ads, these look like normal video posts, but with a sponsored tag at the top.
- Carousel Ads: These ads look the same as photo ads, but feature multiple photos that users can scroll through.
These ads serve four purposes: video views, clicks to your website, mobile app installs, and mass awareness. [Need help with your Instagram marketing? Check out our top picks for social media marketing tools]
7. Sell products on Instagram.
Instagram, will save this data for future transactions. Buyers can make transactions online easily with card payments.
Other Instagram tips and tricks
- The only place you can share a working link that directs users to a website is on your profile. Links don’t work in photo captions or comments, so if you’re trying to direct people to a specific web page, you can change your bio’s default link to that page and note in the caption that the link goes found in his profile.
- Make sure your posts relate to your brand. It can be tempting to share photos of food, fashion, and animals as they are popular on the platform.
- Post an image advertising your giveaway, sale, or contest, and ask users to repost that image with a specific, personalized hashtag to enter. You can then search for that hashtag to see who reposted it and pick a winner. Promotions will allow your customers and followers to market your brand for you by talking about your promotion on their personal pages, which encourages more people to visit your profile. However, if you decide to hold a contest or sweepstakes, be sure to follow the rules and guidelines.
- Respond to comments from other users. When people comment on your photos, respond to them. Interacting with customers and subscribers shows that you pay attention and care about what they say. They are more likely to continue following you and interacting with your images if they feel they are important.
- Embed Instagram posts on your website. This shows visitors that you are active on Instagram and can help you get more followers. Simply select the photo you want to embed, click the ellipsis button in the lower right corner, and select Embed. This opens a box with the embed code and gives you the option to view the title.
- You can pay influencers to naturally market your products to their followers. These sponsored posts are usually subtle and do not look like advertisements. This is useful because people often hate ads.
- Share posts directly to your story. Using this feature, small businesses can interact with their followers while promoting their products or services. If a customer posts a photo of your product, you can share the post directly to your story to showcase the product and your customer.
- Use polls and other features in your stories. Instagram has lots of interactive features that you can use to build conversations and relationships online. For example, you can use the interactive questions tag on Instagram Stories. This feature allows subscribers to submit questions for you to answer. It’s a fun and easy way to interact with your followers.
- Use IGTV. IGTV is a feature that displays long vertical videos. If you get creative, you can use IGTV to market your business in a variety of ways, including hosting FAQ sessions and running how-to discussions. Check out our guide for more ways to use social media video marketing.
- Use coils. Launched in August 2020, Reels is one of Instagram’s newest updates. Reels are short videos (no longer than 15 seconds) that you can edit with audio, effects, and creative tools. You can use Reels to showcase new products, showcase your employees or recent work, or interact directly with customers.
